Pence peaces out. Five bucks says he endorses Trump, who’s currently demanding it. (CNN)
New House Speaker Mike Johnson (is that right? I’m going to have to doublecheck that WHO for a while!) has a wife who has a counseling business. It is a bad counseling business. — HuffPost
No, nobody can figure out why the objectively terrific economy — truly, and currently the strongest in the world — is felt by so many Americans as worse than under Trump. (Heather Cox Richardson / NoahPinion)
You almost have to admire it.
[Jenna] Ellis bounced around a bit after that, including a six-month stint at a discovery processing company which had a contract with the State Department. As the Journal notes, Ellis appears to have retconned this in her bio to “an attorney for the US Department of State.”
— Our Liz with the definitive Jenna Ellis trip, at Public Notice
Dividing “knowledge” and “creative” workers from “industrial” workers. Good luck with that, cartoon villains! — Cory Doctorow at Pluralistic
Perry out. (CNN)
Mr. Wrong talks about Halloween, and Halloween parties, and grownups on Halloween and legit neighborhoods for trick-or-treating. We had our Halloween party yester-yestertoday eve. Y’all came from Oberlin, and Kentucky! We didn’t take any pictures of the party, once again. Shy really needs to start doing that. I am so tired! (Indignity)
I made up a cocktail! And put out a little note card with a tray of the ingredients and how to make it! Only one guest did it, but she said it was good! It did not have a snazzy name, so I called it “Choco-Orange Drink,” I was all out of brain snazz. It was!
Ice, in a cup.
One big shot (the big end of your two sided shot-pourer thingie) of espresso vodka.
One small shot chocolate liqueur (in this case Borgato).
One small shot orange liqueur (in this case Royale Orange).
Three dashes chocolate bitters.
Drizzle with heavy cream.
The sangria was much more popular, it was:
One bottle Costco sangria (or two bottles red wine).
Peach-flavored grain alcohol (a bunch).
Orange liqueur (a bunch).
Pomegranate syrup (a bunch).
Half cup brown sugar.
Vigorous shakes of ground cloves, ground ginger, ground cardamom.
Blueberries, sliced apple, sliced Japanese pear, frozen raspberries, sliced grapes. Chill four or more hours. It was like candy.
If you haven’t mainlined enough high fructose corn syrup this week, these candy corn fudges look darling. I’m too tired. Also too full of sangria sugar. — Baketivity
Is the $800 mai tai worth every penny, Food and Wine? Is it?
A creepy fake town! (Atlas Obscura)
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Quite independent from Robyn's awesome post last week, I coincidentally was also working on a Ouija post. I cover a bit of the history of spirit boards and how that links to Spiritualism in the US. Perhaps you'd like to read it? https://open.substack.com/pub/martiniambassador/p/ouija-look-at-that
"Renowned artist Laurie Anderson, a versatile talent in music, composition, poetry, film, vocals and literature, is set to embrace yet another creative role this Halloween.
Anderson was selected to serve as the Grand Marshal of the 50th annual Village Halloween Parade.
"I am going to use this violin in the parade, and we're going to play a little bit of things with some really large drone sounds. These are guitars with them set up against their speakers, so that there's a lot of feedback. So it'll be this massive sort of beautiful overtones and harmonics,” Anderson said of her planned entrance.
Anderson will also pay tribute to her late husband, The Velvet Underground frontman Lou Reed, as he is posthumously bestowed with the same honorary title of Grand Marshal.
The tribute will be especially fitting, given that Reed’s song, “Halloween Parade,” has become the parade’s anthem.
"It's a memorial, in a way, for all his friends that he was missing who weren't going to be at the parade. They were dead, basically. And he wrote that in a kind of AIDS era, so it was a kind of memorial for them, really,” Anderson said.
Reed died on Oct. 27, 2013, following a lengthy battle with liver disease. He was 71."
https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/human-interest/2023/10/30/velvet-underground-lou-reed-laurie-anderson-grand-marshal-50th-village-halloween-parade